The statue of Lady Justice on the roof of the Jefferson County Courthouse in Steubenville.Gus Chan, The Plain Dealer

STEUBENVILLE, Ohio -- A West Virginia judge has denied a defense attorney's request that three juvenile witnesses be transported by their parents across the Ohio River to testify next week during a rape trial involving two Steubenville football player, according to a ruling obtained by the Associated Press.

Attorney Walter Madison considered two of the witnesses, longtime friends of the victim, to be key to his 16-year-old client's defense.

The other subpoena was for the 16-year-old Weirton, West Va. girl whose parents first reported she was raped in mid-August after she attended a high school party where area students were drinking.

It is unclear whether prosecutors planned to have the victim testify.

Madison is representing one of the two 16-year-old boys, both football players, who are charged in the case.

The rape charges gained national and then international attention after bloggers began disseminating distasteful teenage Tweets, social media commentary and a photo that appeared to show the teen girl being carried by several football players.

A hacker activist group later released a 12-minute video made by friends of the football players where the victim is made fun of as "so raped" and called a "dead girl."

The victim has told police and prosecutors that she doesn't remember the incident. Three of the football players' friends testified for the prosecution during an October hearing, saying that the 16-year-old was drunk, stumbling and had vomited repeatedly that night and early morning .

Two of them admitted to taking pictures or recording some of the incidents and later deleting them from their phones. Prosecutors from the Ohio Attorney General's office, who are prosecuting the case, said the images taken by those witnesses cannot be recovered, otherwise those boys would have been charged with crimes.

A subpoena for witnesses to testify issued in one state does not automatically have validity in another state. Madison filed motions in order to secure the testimony through a special interstate process and Ohio Judge Thomas Lipps also asked requested the subpoenas be issued by the neighboring state's court.

According to the Associated Press, Hancock County Judge Ronald Wilson ruled that no laws supported him compelling the juveniles to testify because in Ohio juvenile delinquency proceedings are not technically considered "criminal" hearing.

"A trial judge follows the law -- he does not make it," Wilson wrote.

Madison and other defense attorneys said at hearing earlier this year that several of the witnesses they hoped to rely on had obtained their own lawyers and were not responding to requests to be interviewed.

In Madison's filing, he said that teen witnesses were vital to his client's case because they had attended the party with the reported victim and had information about how much she drank and her ability to make decisions and consent to sex. Madison said the friends also had knowledge about the victim's character and credibility and information about a possible prior incident that happened when the victim was inebriated.

Prior incidents unrelated to the current sexual assault case may or may not be admissible under Ohio laws that protect certain details of a victim's history in rape cases. Ultimately those decisions are up to a judge

According to the court filing, both of her friends told the police they attempted to prevent her from leaving the party with a group of Steubenville athletes because she had consumed vodka and beer and was extremely drunk.

Madison said that the victim's testimony was central to his client's case and would involve her recollection of her actions before and after the incident, including what she told hospital staff, her friends and a text messages she sent to one of the accused boys after the incident.

"My client has a
constitutional right to confront his accuser," Madison said. "He has to
have the right to call witnesses on his behalf."

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